Greek Personal Names and Linguistic Continuity

1 Greek Personal Names and Linguistic Continuity ANNA MORPURGO DAVIES The linguistic study of personal names THE STUDY OF PERSONAL NAMES does not always arouse enthusiasm among historical linguists. Most onomastic work is seen as etymological in nature and consequently flawed, since personal names are even more difficult to ety- mologize than normal nouns. Yet it is easy to identify important linguistic work on the subject that is not etymological and carries a high degree of linguistic credibility. A crucial question concerns the way in which the diachronic development of personal names differs from that of other lexical items. Though at first sight the question seems to be of interest only to the linguist, I want to argue that an answer can be helpful for the historian too. There are risks in the enterprise: on the one hand we require a set of gener- alities which may seem either woolly or dull or both (and will not be new for the linguist), on the other all general statements must be supported with very detailed information which comes close to pedantry. Personal names vs. lexical items Historical linguists are trained to study the phonological, morphological, and syntactical changes incurred by words and combinations of words through time. They also study meaning changes, i.e. they look at the contexts in which words occur in different periods and from those contexts extract Proceedings of the British Academy, 104, 15–39. © The British Academy 2000. Copyright © British Academy 2000 – all rights reserved 16 Anna Morpurgo Davies information which allows them to establish the meaning of the word and, if possible, to date the various stages of its semantic development. A linguist will be interested, for instance, in observing that the Old English form of the word ‘soon’ was so¯na and that it meant ‘at once’, rather than ‘soon’. Here we meet a first contrast with the study of personal names. It would be odd to ask in so many words whether the meaning of the name Elizabeth has changed between the time of Elizabeth the First and that of the present queen. On the other hand it is reasonable to ask how the name Elizabeth was pro- nounced and/or spelled in the sixteenth century. In other words, though we can- not discuss in the same way the meaning and meaning change of personal names and common nouns, the phonological shape of names norm-ally changes together with the phonological shape of other elements of the lexicon. Here too, however, there are differences. We normally expect any sound or sound sequence to alter in a way which is paralleled in other words: if Old English so¯na [so:na] becomes soon [su:n], we also expect to find that OE mo¯na [mo:na] and OE fo¯da [fo:da], if continued, become moon [mu:n] and food [fu:d], as they in fact do. The pattern is clear and regular and it involves replacement. Different individuals may alter their pronunciation in different ways and at different speed, but normally, in the same language or dialect, after a period the old and the new form do not co-exist: we do not say both [so:na] and [su:n]. But if we look at an Old English name like Æðelpı ryd, by the end of the nineteenth century this seems to be continued by three different names: Audrey, Ethel, and Etheldreda. We do not find this altogether surprising, but we would think it much odder if OE so¯na was continued by e.g. *so, soon and *sonar. Structure and evolution of personal names Personal names may differ from other lexemes both in their structure and in their evolution pattern. Before asking why this is so we ought to explore some of these differences. The best way to do it is to look at real examples (some of which may look unbearably trivial) and consider what they teach us. My exem- plification is based on Greek and starts with questions of word-formation. Consider first two adjectives, both found in the same late Thessalian inscription (IG IX (2) 517, Larisa, late third century BC): λθιοy ‘made of stone’1 1 In Attic, where the equivalent of Thessalian λθιοy is λθινοy, adjectives of material are formed either with an inherited *-eyo- suffix (cf. χρυσο y < χρυσ οy) or with an -ινο- suffix as in λθινοy. Copyright © British Academy 2000 – all rights reserved PERSONAL NAMES AND LINGUISTIC CONTINUITY 17 and Ενµειοy ‘son of Eunomos’; they are both synchronically derived from thematic words (λθοy, Ενοµοy) with two productive suffixes, -ιοy and -ειοy. We have every reason to believe that, for the patronymic adjective too, the original suffix was -ιοy, but patronymic adjectives which end in -ειοy and not in -ιοy are not limited to this inscription. In Thessalian in general, -ιοy was replaced with -ειοy in the derivatives from most pers-onal names but not in the derivatives from common nouns. Secondly, consider frequent names such as Θεδοτοy or ∆ιδοτοy. Both names are wholly transparent and fit in the general category of -δοτοy compounds; indeed we have evidence for a straightforward adjective θεδοτοy ‘god-given’. However, while the -δοτοy compounds are two-termination words, i.e. they do not have different forms for masculine and feminine, next to the personal name Θεδοτοy we find a feminine name Θεοδτη and next to ∆ιδοτοy a feminine ∆ιοδτη. In other words, the standard rules of Greek word-formation are broken for this type of personal name. Similarly, and again in contrast with the standard derivational pattern, we find feminines like Θεοδρα next to Θεδωροy, Γλαυκππη, Ξανθππη next to Γλα!κιπποy, Ξα´ νθιπποy, Καλλκλεια next to Καλλικλ$y, Μενεκρα´ τεια next to Μενεκρα´ τηy, etc. These feminines are old, since in the second millennium BC we find at Mycenae (V 659) te-o-do-ra (Θεοδρα) and a-re-ka-sa-da-ra ( &Αλεξα´ νδρα), and Homer has names like &Αµφιγ νεια and Ερυκλ εια. However, here too compound adjectives of the πολ!δωροy, µελα´ νιπποy, φλανδροy, εγεν+y type do not normally form separate feminines.2 The next question concerns both phonology and morphology. Short forms like Jim for James or Dick for Richard are found in a number of languages. In Greek at all stages, from Mycenaean to the koine, compound names can be replaced by abbreviated forms: in the Iliad one and the same man, Achilles’ charioteer, is called ,Αλκιµοy (Il., 19. 392; 24. 474, 574) and &Αλκιµ δων (Il., 16. 197; 17. 467 etc.). This is not a standard type of phonological change and Greek does not abbreviate all words in this manner. We have here a shortening process which is typical of personal names: the abbreviated form and the full form may co-exist and be treated as identical and perhaps interchangeable (as Tom and Thomas in English), or may acquire separate status and eventually be treated as different names. 2 In the ancient locus classicus about feminines, Aristophanes (Clouds, 658 ff.) does not refer to this specific point, but comments on the feminine gender of κα´ ρδοποy ‘kneading trough’ and the possible female referent of -λεκτρυν ‘cock and hen’, while mentioning the feminine names Σωστρα´ τη and Κλεων!µη. Copyright © British Academy 2000 – all rights reserved 18 Anna Morpurgo Davies There is a link between these Kurzformen and a phonological process which is far more common in names than elsewhere: expressive gemination tends to affect the abbreviated forms rather than the full compound. Totake the standard example always quoted: one and the same person, a fourth-century tyrant of Methymna, is referred to by Theopompus (ap. Athen., 10. 442) as Κλεοµ νηy, but appears in an inscription in which he is honoured by the Athenians (IG II2 284) as Κλ οµιy and is quoted by Isocrates (Ep., 7. 8 f.) as Κλ οµµιy;3 we would not expect to find *Κλεοµµ νηy. The examples pro- vided by Vottero for the geminated forms of Boeotia4 confirm this view: cf. for example, ∆α´ µασσιy (IG VII 1908a), presumably from a ∆αµασι- compound (e.g. ∆αµα´ σιπποy). It is impossible to know if, in actual speech acts, other lexical items underwent gemination with the same frequency, but, if they did, this was not indicated in writing and presumably did not impinge on the standard lexicon. In other words, in phonological processes such as shortening, gemination, etc. personal names behave differently from common nouns. Now comes a question of meaning. Composition is one of the standard means by which Indo-European (IE) languages in general, and Greek in particular, enrich their vocabulary. It is a basic rule of thumb that new compounds yield new meanings and that these are normally predictable from the meaning of the component elements. Greek, as Indo-European, frequently forms names from compounds, but there is a fundamental difference between lexical compounds and onomastic compounds. The latter may over- lap with the former (as in the case of Θεδοτοy) but need not; there are onomastic compounds which would not be acceptable as lexical compounds for the simple reason that they make no sense. Solmsen gives as examples words like Λυσκριτοy or Λυσµνηστοy.5 Masson follows Bechtel in assum- ing that some at least of what he calls ‘noms irrationels’ (Κλεοφο0νιξ is an example) arise because the basic aim is to continue traditional family elements in the name.6 As Solmsen had noticed, Aristophanes’ account in the Clouds (60 ff.) of how Strepsiades’ first son was named fits with this pattern. Strepsiades’ wife wanted a -ιπποy name: Χα´ ριπποy or Ξα´ νθιπποy or Καλλιππδη2, but Strepsiades himself preferred Φειδωνδηy, i.e.

Load more